Robert Satloff is director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy
For example, would Israel restrict the expansion of settlements in the West Bank or move more territory under Palestinian control in exchange for formalizing ties with other giant states, such as Morocco, or teams of states, such as the small Gulf countries? And no less vital, would the Palestinian leadership abandon its self-destructive opposition to the emerging wave of Arab normalization with Israel and paintings with Arab capitals to maximize the benefits that can be derived from this new development? Alternatively, Israel can simply review to resell its restriction on annexation to other Arab states. In this case, it will be up to the Arab suitors in Jerusalem to make the resolution: Does this “recycled link” provide enough politics to reap the benefits of open bilateral relations? How the ties evolve in the emerging relations between Israel and the Arab states is one of the most important follow-up questions, and indeed one of the most intriguing, of t The UAE Breakthrough.
It is not difficult to believe in a situation in which Emirati freeze or in opposite facets of normalization, as a reaction to an Israeli measure, namely reprehensible to the Palestinians, for example, or in the event that Israel and post-Erdogan Turkey make the decision to kiss.and makeup.
As vital as the agreement between the United Arab Emirates and Israel, in some respects it is as small as it seems.It is not a question of diminishing the substance of the advancement or the objective of the main ones: the pioneering leader of the emirate, the Crown Prince.Mohammed bin Zayed, or Netanyahu, who collected wonderful dividends from the efforts of his first ministry to expand Israel’s global reach.Rather, it is a question of detecting what deserves to be evident: that the status quo of general and complete relationships is, for anyone, a selection and not a necessity.And depending on the circumstances, either can also simply move away from this selection without undergoing a primary strategic change.
In this sense, the Emirates are others from Egypt or Jordan, any of which wanted peace with Israel to face basic existential demanding situations: for Anwar Sadat, the desire to regain territory and, through peace, to redirect Egypt to the West; for King Hussein, the desire for the Haichemite movements following the wonderful agreement between Israel and the PLO in Oslo.Similarly, Israel today, powerful, dynamic, self-assured, is not the Israel that reluctantly sent every square inch of Sinai to remove Egypt from the Arab coalition of war or that gave the Hahemits a contractual guarantee of their role in Jerusalem.to lock Jordan into a long-term agreement for its Jordanian security border.Israel and the Emirates have no usual borders, no territorial disputes, no existential or ideological challenges involved in public reconciliation.No doubt both will gain great benefits from their normalization agreement, but neither techniques of the strategic importance of what Egypt and Jordan have gained through their peace treaties with the Jewish state, and vice versa.
The Emirati learned that they can gain substantial advantages from this administration and its possible successor if they intervene to provide the ladder to Netanyahu and get off the annex tree.
What the UAE has is not unusual with Egypt and Jordan is that they will reap huge benefits from their deal with Israel in terms of relations with Washington. In the technology arena, the UAE otherwise has access to limited high-tech weapons for fear that their delivery could also disrupt the qualitative advantage of the Israeli military. In terms of politics, the UAE gets some immunity from the much harsher policies of authoritarian Arab regimes that the Democrats are likely to follow, they deserve Joe Biden to win the White House in November; not full immunity, of course, but the Arab leaders alone. with Israel it enjoys another prestige from the Arab leaders who are not at peace with Israel. On those two key issues – access to complex technologies and coverage of complaints from UAE interventions in Yemen and Lithrougha – simply having open relations with Israel might not be enough; on the contrary, as is the case in Cairo and Amman, the continued defense of the Israeli and pro-Israel representatives on the hill would possibly be needed to provide the Emiratis with the political cushion that they believe has probably earned the ultimate thanks. to standardization.
But there is a vital difference that is a key corollary to all this: precisely because strategic betting is much lower for both sides of the agreement between the United Arab Emirates and Israel than for Israel’s other Arab peace partners, the accusation that deserves the breakdown of relations would be much less than if Egypt or Jordan broke their ties with Israel.It is not misleading to believe a situation in which Emirati freeze or in opposite facets of normalization, as a reaction to an Israeli measure, namely reprehensible towards the Palestinians, for example, or when Israel and post-Erdogan Turkey make the decision to kiss and make up, but distance matters.The Emirates can simply degrade relations, withdraw its ambassador and impose restrictions on Israeli tourists and the repercussions would be manageable for all parties; Egypt and Jordan, which have rarely done so during their peace with Israel, are more at stake in relations with their next-door neighbor and possibly face more serious consequences (a phenomenon that works in any way, it will have to be added).
For its part, Israel will enjoy significant benefits from general relations with the United Arab Emirates, whether in terms of bilateral opportunities, can expand with the entrepreneurial and welcoming people of an influential Gulf state that, like Israel, is above its influence on the foreign stage..and the perspective has an effect on the expansion of ties with other Arab and Muslim countries.But formalizing ties with the United Arab Emirates does not fundamentally adjust any of Israel’s other demanding strategic situations, be it Iran’s nuclear risk, the missile risk of sub-state actors at its borders, or the binational risk of a clash with the Palestinians.As with the Emirates, also for Israel, the risks of general relations are lower than those of former peace partners.
One scenario in which others will realize the impact of the agreement between the United Arab Emirates and Israel will be in terms of the opposition it generates among its enemies. a decade of ostracism on the component of the Arab world, but nonetheless, those other countries reconciled with Cairo on their terms, not theirs.Since then, many Arab countries have hosted senior Israeli ministers, industrial missions and teams sports, with little revulsion, even radicals in the region. At this point, times have changed.
The Emirati learned that they can gain substantial advantages from this administration and its possible successor if they intervene to provide the ladder to Netanyahu and get off the annex tree.
The main vehement critics of the agreement between the United Arab Emirates and Israel have been Turkey and Iran; Ironically, the non-Arab Muslim states that were Israel’s closest regional partners at the beginning of the peace process, but have obviously suffered serious setbacks since then. The operational question is whether their outrage over the deal will take a more extensive form than mere harangues on their favorite satellite channels. Given the strength of the Israeli and Emirati economies, boycotts by critics of the Jerusalem-Abu Dhabi partnership will be futile and will likely harm the boycotters more than their victims. The issue is whether Tehran, Ankara and local representatives like Hezbollah and Hamas will target Israeli and Emirati assets, especially symptoms of their association, such as embassies, joint ventures, airlines and tourist sites, for terrorist attacks. Even if that happened, one deserves not necessarily to jump to the conclusion that outrage over the agreement between the UAE and Israel was itself the trigger. Given the regional competencies and animosities between Lithrougha and the Gulf, it can be difficult to know whether this new Arab-Israeli partnership is the immediate cause of any specific action or simply the ultimate practical excuse.
Lastly, the agreement between the United Arab Emirates and Israel is “smaller” than you might think in terms of the American role. Certainly, Trump’s leadership deserves a wonderful honor for discovering that the expansion of the circle of peace in the Middle East through relations between the United Arab Emirates and Israel. it would gain advantages for American interests far more than blessing Israel’s disastrous move toward annexation of the West Bank and then investing its weight in the realization of this standardization agreement. But the prospect of this crisis itself stems from a myopic promise by US President Trump last January to recognize a territory that Israel could simply annex in accordance with Trump’s peace plan, followed by a refusal. of your administration to oppose this silly offer. Presidential adviser Jared Kushner himself turned out to have declared that the agreement between the United Arab Emirates and Israel was as much as a means to thwart this American initiative when, in a tacitly frank demonstration, he wrote an editorial in the Washington Post promoting the Emirati Agreement. United Arab. Israel that made no express mention of Trump’s peace plan.
Like all smart political decisions, the agreement between the United Arab Emirates and Israel is the result of the informed self-interest of the main parties.Trump’s leadership learned that Israel’s annexation of the West Bank territory would have meant the end of the president’s peace plan and open to tactics.to help Netanyahu renounce his promise to pursue him in order to avoid this political embarrassment.(The idea, presented through some analysts, that the annexation of a brilliant deception through Netanyahu to provide influence to the standardization agreement is ill-informed; if Kushner had not resisted the pleas of US Ambassador David Friedman or if Israel’s COVID count had not increased dangerously and had withdrawn the annexation of the political agfinisha , all the symptoms imply that Netanyahu would have kept his promise.
The Emirati learned that they could gain substantial advantages from this administration and its possible successor if they intervened to supply the ladder to help Netanyahu get off the annex tree.And Netanyahu himself concluded that the practical gains advantages from normalization with a primary Gulf state surpassed the ideological satisfaction of annexation, a fact that has become increasingly vital as Joe Biden’s election customers in recent months, widening the threat that annexation will lead to a gap in the most important appointments with Washington.
The result should not be exaggerated or minimized: the status quo of general relations between the United Arab Emirates and Israel is not a moment of cosmic transformation in the regional balance of power, nor only the product of an inevitable evolution of relations beyond tranquility, a footnote to history, to temporarily forget; on the contrary, it can be identified for the historical occasion that is, almost and psychologically: a very significant, if still progressive, step towards the legitimization of the concept of a Jew.State in the Middle East In fact, the fact that it is an association of choice, not an association out of necessity, makes it worthy of celebration.